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DASD teachers' pact extended

School board members said they did not want to juggle contract negotiations with the opening of a second high school in the 2002-03 school year.

"We go into two high schools in September 2002 and I think the board felt as a whole, having a contract going into that year was important," said Richard Orr, vice president of the board and a member of the board's contract negotiation committee. "I think everyone on the committee was pleased with what we came up with."

Tom Beccone, president of the Downingtown Area Education Association, said that the Pennsylvania State Education Association recommended that the teachers enter into negotiations since the district made the offer to do so last fall.

"There's always something you might gain by an early bird contract," Beccone said he was told. He said he thought the final offers made in the extension were fair.

The current contract, which was to have ended in September 2002, will now expire in September 2004, and the changes increase salaries and teachers' contributions to the costs of health care.On average, salaries will increase 4.23 percent in 2002-03 and 4.27 percent in the final year of the contract.

Beccone said that the increase in dollars will be even for the membership in 2002-03, with each to receive an additional $2,150 a year.

"This is the first year that it was an across-the-board increase," he said. In the last several contracts teachers at the top end of the pay scale did not see much in the way of increases, said Beccone, a teacher in the district for 12 years and in his second year as president of the DAEA.

The increase is nearly even in the final year of the contract, he said; the average increase in 2003-04 will be $2,300.

The increases equate to a projected $1.515 million additional expense to the district in 2002-03; and in the final year of the contract the additional cost is estimated to be $1.621 million, said Richard Fazio, chief financial officer for the district.

However, Fazio said, those expenses will be offset in each year by about $200,000 because of concessions teachers made that increase their share of health benefits costs.

Teachers pay $5 when they see a doctor in the Blue Cross network, but as of 2002-03, they will make a $15 co-pay when they see a specialist. In the final year, teachers' co-pay on prescription drugs will increase from $5 to either $10 or $15, depending on whether the drug is generic or brand-name.

"Downingtown Area School District continues to be one of the premier school districts in the state both academically and athletically and this is due in large part to the outstanding teachers within the district," said Fazio, who was on the administration's negotiating team with Superintendent Dan Collins.

"The teachers within the district put in tremendously long hours and perform duties that go well beyond their responsibilities. This is a win-win contract for the district and DAEA," Fazio said.

Beccone and Orr both said that the negotiations came to a standstill in January.

"It was dead. It was like breathing its last gasp in January," Beccone said. But he said that he was convinced the administration and board wanted to settle an extended contract. "So we just kept plugging away and hammering at it."

Of the 740 teachers, guidance counselors and nurses represented by the union, 324 said yes to the two-year extension and 116 voted no, said Beccone.

Beccone said the plan was to allow teachers to vote via computers within their school buildings, but because of a last-minute challenge to that approach, a meeting was scheduled too late for many to make arrangements to attend and vote, he said. However, he said, he believes the distribution of votes is representative of the full body of teachers.

Seven school directors voted in favor of the extension; Director Norm Long said he abstained because his wife teaches in the district, and Director Roger Taylor, a member of the school directors' contract negotiation committee, was not present.

Director James Wychgel, also on the board of school directors' negotiating team, said at the director's Wednesday night meeting that the extension of the current contract has advantages and disadvantages.

"It offers us stability for another two years," he said. But the downside is that other issues important to education, including teacher training, curricula development, and contract days, were not addressed in the extension, he said.